Belkin Taps Airgain for Embedded Antennas in Newest Routers

By Steve Anderson

Contributing TMCnet Writer

Belkin is a major name in the computer peripherals front, so hearing that they've got plans to launch a new line of WiFi (News - Alert) routers is more than noteworthy. But for these new routers, they needed a big new name in embedded antennas to support them, and that's why they turned to Airgain.

Airgain's antenna systems will be part of Belkin's AC1000DB and AC1200DB Wi-Fi Dual-Band AC+ Gigabit Routers, which are set to release this summer. The antennas are part of a development program that's been ongoing since 2004, which in turn gives them a whole series of proprietary methods and measurement tools that make Airgain antennas impressive pieces of hardware, and impart better overall wireless performance for those devices that use the antennas. In fact, previous Belkin models have also incorporated Airgain antennas, at last report, including the N150, N300, N600 and N900 series routers.

Belkin's Senior Director of Networking, Mike Chen, described the reasoning behind going with Airgain, saying “This provides improved speed and coverage over previous generation 802.11n devices, and enhances the online streaming experience for videos, movies, and music throughout the home. Leveraging Airgain’s embedded antenna technology and integration approach, our new 802.11ac router will allow consumers to enjoy the full capabilities of this new technology.”

In turn, Airgain's President and CEO, Charles Myers, explained Airgain's connection with Belkin by saying “We pride ourselves on being the only antenna vendor in the market today that designs throughput focused antenna solutions, and we are excited to be working with Belkin to deliver maximum performance antenna solutions for its market-leading home networking products.”

With the demand for bandwidth steadily growing thanks to a variety of online-only products, from text to video to gaming, it's not surprising that the hardware necessary to get the bandwidth to the devices that use it is also both increasing and improving. Belkin hardware has a long history of quality, and seeing Airgain take part in that history is a welcome development indeed. It will of course be interesting to see what Belkin and Airgain follow these developments up with, but in the short term, the Belkin and Airgain coalition should be a solid boost to the fortunes of online gamers, online video watchers, or just anyone who enjoys a solid Internet connection without needing to be tethered by a cable to a device.

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